


Well, It's Convenient

by quantumoddity



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: (or so they think), Alex has sperm, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Arranged sex, Basically, Eliza wants a baby, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Mutual Pining, Platonic Sex, Pregnancy, Slow Burn, classic fan fiction shenanigans, things just work out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 13:12:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12795324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: So, as it turns out, sometimes the old fashioned way is best...-Eliza wants to have a baby and she asks her best friend Alex to help her out, who may or may not have a hell of a crush on her. Things escalate from there.





	Well, It's Convenient

For the second time in as many weeks, Alexander Hamilton found himself on a spectacularly, singularly uncomfortable chair, looking at his best friend with an utterly staggered expression in his wide, brown eyes and straining his ears through the ambient chatter around him in the vain hope that he’d just misheard and she didn’t just say what he thought she’d said. It was a pretty damn specific situation to be in but it was one that he was starting to find eerily familiar; one he assumed with a sinking heart he wasn’t through with.

“I’m sorry, it’s _how_ much?” he stressed, his hands shifting restlessly in the deep pockets of the hoodie he wore, a nervous, fidgeting tic he’d been doing since he took his seat in the waiting room and hadn’t stopped or even slowed.

Eliza sighed deeply, tiredly and pulled the stiff pamphlet the doctor had just given her out from under her arm and pushed it across the seat between them towards Alex, the relevant page open so she wouldn’t have to say it again and taste that sour disappointment.

“Fucking hell,” Alex winced at the sight of the figures almost apologetically printed on the page, a breakdown of all the medications needed and the consultancies required and the procedures involved, each with its own piece of stone to add to the enormous boulder of a sum at the very bottom line.

“Yeah. That about sums it up,” Eliza allowed with a forced shrug, “And I’d have to take time off work too. For yet more hospital appointments.”

“Oh,” Alex grunted, biting his lower lip and freeing one hand from his cavernous sweater to play with his hair, a sure sign that he’d shifted onto a whole other plane of anxiety. He knew how much Eliza despised hospitals, it was a miracle and a testament to how much she wanted this that she was even here today,  “That...that sucks.”

‘Sucks’ felt like it fell a few thousand miles short of what this situation was. Alex’s stomach felt like it had detached from whatever biological skulduggery held it in place and was bouncing loose inside his stomach, the sensation someone would probably have if they’d been riding one of those proper skull-shattering, skeleton-rearranging roller coasters for two weeks straight. Which was pretty much exactly what Alex had been experiencing, albeit in more of an emotional than literal sense.

 

He couldn’t deny that the overwhelming emotion he’d felt when it had become clear that his best friend didn’t intend for this to be one of their usual lunch dates where they spouted bile about their colleagues who were driving them up the wall (mostly Alex) or entertained with stories of what ridiculous Rich People Shit their family had pulled this week (exclusively Eliza), the emotion that ruled his mind in that instant was fear. He refused to feel guilty for that and knew Eliza wouldn’t expect it of him. How else was he supposed to react when the girl whose right-hand man he’d been since the very first day of college, when he’d made an admittedly shaky but impactful first impression by walking into her and spilling black coffee down the both of them, took his hands across their usual table at their favourite place to eat in the city and asked him in that firm but quiet voice of her’s if he’d mind having a baby with her. She genuinely did phrase it like that, of course she did.

She’d clarified a little better after Alex had recovered from choking on his soda and spending ten minutes hacking and spluttering loud enough to turn most other heads in the cafe towards them. Her eyes had grown anxious and her cheeks had turned pink as she’d insisted that she wasn’t asking anything of him but a sperm donation, she’d thought about this so carefully and agonised over it for months, she couldn’t think of anyone better than him, she trusted him, if he didn’t want to be involved with...what it produced, no obligation at all, of course she’d understand…

All while Alex felt like someone had whipped away the classy hardwood floors underneath his feet and left him spiralling through empty space. Memories he’d hoped to never feel invading his brain again were piling up faster than he could tip them back down into the darker recesses of his mind, giving him the sensation of swarms of spiders clambering and skittering over him, getting under his skin. The word _father_ didn’t have amazing connotations for Alex, it never had, but he’d been able to avoid it for a long time while he was at college and law school, only getting the slightest roiling stomachs and sweaty palms and lips chewed until they bled when his friends would talk about their children, Lafayette and Martha and even John would talk of his daughter often and fondly. Of course, the panic would only last until he actually met the little sprogs, they were all cute and funny and liked how their Tio Alex kept marker pens in his pockets so they could colour in his tattoos; the anxiety never held up long after that but there would still be that twinge deep in his stomach at the word alone. He wasn’t sure that was ever going away but at least it was small enough to cope with.

And there he was in the middle of the cafe, trying to hide a goddamn riot behind a grin that was turning into a grimace and eyes that were far too shiny to be considered normal. And somewhere in the middle of it all, while his back was turned and his brain occupied with damage control, with putting out as many small fires on the inside of his skull as he could before it could turn into a conflagration, a ‘yes’ slipped past his gritted teeth.

Both him and Eliza had been utterly stunned by that, nothing passing between them but a shared look of slack, wide eyed surprise. Alex hadn’t even been aware that there was a ‘yes’ lurking somewhere, battling its way through his anxiety, through beating winds and raging storms to climb off his tongue ahead of the frantic screech that oh fuck, he just remembered he’s parked by a meter and he left his iron on at home and he doesn’t speak English and he only has two more seconds to live, please excuse him…

But it had worked so hard to get there...so he supposed that was his answer?

 

So here Alex was, being confronted with the damnable highway robbery that was the American medical system and trying to platonically make a baby with his best friend. What exactly his game plan was in the moment his...stuff mixed up with Eliza’s...stuff and made...more stuff and he was technically no longer needed according to the laws of biology, of that he wasn’t exactly sure. He could tell Eliza was wondering but she hadn’t pressed, she’d only began to cry and leapt across the table to give him one of her patented, full body, vice tight hugs that showed how much unexpected strength was in those delicate arms of her’s. Alex didn’t really think he deserved so much thanks, that he’d earned that look of awe and adoration in her eyes when she looked at him ever since that fateful lunch date, just for saying yes to jacking off into a specimen cup. That’s all he’d said a firm yes to. In the few weeks since that day, he’d been frantically combing his mind for another scrap of certainty to present itself and tell him what his brain wanted but it seemed to have completely dried up after the first time. Which was pretty fucking rich of his brain, to get him into this situation and then bail entirely, leaving him with just a terrifying, panic streaked blankness.

But he was here. He loved Eliza, he wanted to help and he’d hold to his promise. Besides, it was only himself he was terrified over, he knew without a single shred of doubt that Eliza would be a fantastic mother, so wonderful and perfect for the job that it would be kind of criminal to deprive a child of being born belonging to her. Maybe that love and assurance would be enough to cancel out his contribution…

“How is it so expensive?” Alex exclaimed, reading the paper again like he could will it to be more palatable, “I mean...isn’t it just like a fancy turkey baster?”

Eliza screwed up her face, making her nose that could only be described in that clichéd but sweet way as ‘button’ crinkle adorably, “Ew, Alex.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what it is,” Alex crossed his arms defensively, “I did do my reading.”

He had, in fact. Alexander Hamilton didn’t do anything without researching it fully first.

Eliza ran her fingers through her hair, twisting it into curtains around her face like she always did when she was stressed, “Well...I guess we can’t do this right now.”

Alex winced. He’d love to offer to cover the cost of the procedure, hell even half of it would do, but college and law school had left him with a crippling amount of debt and not an awful lot else. He’d arrived on his very first day with next to nothing and had somehow come out the other side with even less.

“Could you ask your parents?” he suggested, not liking the idea even as it came out of his mouth but he just wanted to do something to take that devastated look off her face.

Eliza looked down at her hands, retreating even more into the sanctuary of her hair, “Um...I would but...they aren’t really fans of the idea.”

That jarred him. Not only was Eliza making this huge decision, and entrusting a whole huge chunk of her future happiness to him, she was doing it without the support of her parents. Alex wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first time in the twenty-six years she’d been alive that such a thing had happened.

“Oh…” Another thought closed up his throat and made his fingers tense into fists, “Are they...not fans of the whole idea or of the fact that it’s gonna be my baby?”

Eliza’s eyes widened, ‘Oh! Oh, no, no it’s not that, I promise. They’ve not liked it from the start, I told them I was thinking about it a while ago and well...the reaction wasn’t great. They just don’t get it.” Her voice grew so faint and sad at the end, her eyes dropping, her tone resigned but as if she’d still hoped for better in spite of the evidence.

“I’m sorry, Bets…” Alex murmured in as soft a voice as he could ever manage, reaching across and taking her hand, gently moving it from pulling at her hair to clasping it in his lap with both of his own. If there was anyone who understood general parental shittiness, it was him.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Eliza said, smiling with her usual quiet bravery, “I don’t mind. This is just a setback, right? We can come back to this in... I don’t know, a year or so. Less if I let my car finally die and start roller-skating around New York. Hey, maybe I’ll have an even more stable job and this will turn out to be for the best?”

“More like you’ll find a much better sperm source,” Alex lifted an eyebrow, smiling crookedly.

“Hey…” Eliza socked him lightly on the arm, “Stop that. I don’t want anyone else, you know that.”

Alex chuckled, appreciating the lengths she’d go to in defending him from himself, in silent awe of her which, in fairness, was how he spent most of his time around Eliza. But he knew that face. He’d seen that face at 2am when they’d been sharing a cab back from the bar and she’d stuck her head out of the window to see the lights rushing by and feel the wind in her hair. He’d seen that face at half past eight, with thirty minutes to go before their final exam, bleary eyed with wild bird nest hair and a look of fierce, caffeine fuelled determination the likes of which he’d never seen. He’d seen it illuminated from within like there was some kind of power source behind her eyes that other people didn’t seem to have, a kind of sun that worked on pure joy and wonder, so bright that it could even warm someone like him. He’d seen that face nearly every day of his life for the past six years and he knew how to read it.

And right now, he could see plain as day that Eliza was devastated.

She’d looked so excited, that joy there again, as she’d taken him through all the thinking and daydreaming she’d done about this, how she’d known the time was right now that she’d gotten herself a low paying but at least steady job, doing some kind of clerk or data stuff type for one of the orphanages in town. It had the right hours, she could advance in time and with the time she’d been spending with Dosia’s two boys and Martha’s little Frances and the gaggle of kids Laf had been producing since the scarily young age of eighteen, she just was so certain that this was what she wanted. And a year was a hell of a long time to wait for something you wanted that badly.

Maybe it was that thought, that desperate need to offer her some kind of help, or else pure and simple stupidity, the rise of his chronic and terminal foot in mouth disease, that made Alex say what he then said next. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe, and this was a pretty shaky maybe, it was his own want for this crazy, insane thing to happen. Maybe it was the fact that, as terrified and confused as this whole thing had made Alex at the start, right now? The thought of having to let go of the idea was more than he could bear.

So, he said it.

“Well, why don’t we just do things the old-fashioned way?” he tilted his head, tone light and airy but there was no solid evidence that he was joking, “You and me?”

Eliza looked at him, a snarky comeback loaded and ready to go on her tongue but when she saw his face, her face became a mask of comic surprise.

“The old-fashioned way?” she asked in a voice that was half scandalised, half astounded, “As in…like... _that_.”

“Sex, Eliza, yes,” Alex filled in the gap for her, “You and me. Having sex. To make a baby. That is how it’s worked for thousands of years so…”

Eliza gaped at him, reminding Alex of something his mama used to say, about closing your mouth before you started catching flies. Absurdly calm, enough to reach over and delicately bringing her lower jaw up to close her lips, Alex smiled bemusedly. There didn’t seem to be any flies in here but you could never be too careful.

“I mean…” he clarified, “This is something people do, right? They hook up for reasons other than, y’know, that they’re in a relationship. Platonic like. I’m not gonna lie and say I don’t find you attractive, certainly enough to get the job done. I may be setting myself up for a Mike Tyson blow to the ego here but I think I know you well enough, Bets, to say that you feel the same about me.”

“But it’s…” Eliza found some words, if fragmented and scattered, “I... I do and I... I know what you’re talking about but...I do _love_ you, Alex...but it’s weird!”

Alex pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows, “As weird as asking your friend to donate sperm?”

Eliza flushed a little, “Okay, smarty pants. Now we’re even.”

He chuckled, noting that she still hadn’t taken her hand back from his own, she hadn’t moved away from him, “It is weird. But it makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? We’re both single and young and pretty damn good looking and, most importantly, we care a whole damn lot about each other. And you’d get a baby, free of charge with no hospital fuckery required.”

Eliza percolated the logic in her head for awhile, Alex did always have a gift for selling his utterly madcap, bonkers ideas in a way that made them seem like the best option for everyone involved. And she’d never seen him be wrong yet...not completely anyway.

And, if she was being completely honest with herself? At the thought of a night with Alex, freshman Eliza had perked up considerably and was currently bouncing on the balls of her feet. Her crush on him had been intense, with it being her very first and all, but it had settled with age as they both grew and matured and the whole thing that once very possible could have been just never happened. Alex was the best friend she’d ever known outside of her family, someone who understood her completely inside and out and somehow still wanted to know more.

She’d always love him and she was dizzyingly excited at the possibility of being a mother. Ever since Alex had said yes, she’d been daydreaming of a tiny little thing who curled into her chest looking for love and safety that she was so willing to give in staggering amounts, something beautiful that she could look at with pride and know they would always belong to her and her to them. Her little piece of the universe. And yes, with Alex’s wry smile and thirst to learn and to persevere through anything. The slight weirdness of having sex with her best friend would be well worth that price.

And with half the stuff she and Alex had been through together, what was seeing each other naked? What was a little roll in the sheets between friends?

“Okay,” Eliza had to laugh a little as she said it, feeling like a character in a sitcom about to cut to commercial, “Just to get me pregnant.”

Her laugh was infectious, soon Alex was giggling helplessly too. It was hard not to.

“Hey, it’s not even that weird, right?” he snorted, muffling his laughter in his sleeve so they didn’t get any more suspicious glances from the nurses and patients around them, “Just think of it as me loaning you ten dollars. Except, y’know, instead of money, picture my penis…”

Eliza laughed even harder then, so hard tears began building in her eyes, “I think I’d rather not.”

“Well, yes, it’s a terrible metaphor,” he chuckled, “But in my defense, this situation is pretty damn rare.”

That was certainly true. Rare and wild and risky. But that was kind of how Alex and Eliza had always operated.

Eliza shifted a little closer, only looking cuter red in the face and glittery in the eye from laughter, her hands knotting together with Alex’s, “You really are the best friend ever, Hamilton.”

“Hey, let’s reserve all accolades until you’ve seen my moves, okay?” Alex chuckled, grinning that way he did that made the corners of his eyes crinkle up. But he still kissed her cheek as they got up to leave, “And you’re my best friend ever too. Which is exactly why you get the privilege of seeing me naked.”

“Oh, shut up, Hamilton,” Eliza grinned, “I take it back. Now, come on and knock me up.”

Alex screwed up his face, trying not to dissolve into hysterics again, “Your place or mine?”

 

The answer to that question was obviously Eliza’s place. Alex had a little corner of the heights where you could touch both walls at once by stretching out your arms and the whole thing rattled whenever the elevated train rushed past, in such a way that all the furniture was rearranged when it was gone. That and it was inhabited by Alex himself, who’d turned it into a nightmarish hoarder’s nest. Not exactly the most sexy of locations, there were no pornographic films set amongst stacks of books threatening to fall over and boxes full of half eaten pizza and groaning folders of case files fit to burst.

So, Eliza’s it was.

Both of them let out twin sighs of relief once Eliza had put a glass of wine in each of their hands, it made things feel a little easier. There was a thick pull of tension in the air, one that threatened the whole madcap operation until they caught each other’s eye in the middle of a slightly stilted conversation on how Alex’s last few job interviews had been going (Eliza had been coaching him for every single one). Then they both just bust out laughing.

“I don’t think the whole ignoring the elephant in the room thing is working?” Alex grinned, rubbing the back of his neck, “Want to just call it what it is and do the damn thing?”

Eliza snorted, nearly getting rose right up her nose, “And would ‘the damn thing’ in this case be me?”

That made Alex laugh out loud, the tension in the pit of his stomach uncoiling and slithering away to hide, the way it always seemed to when Eliza was around, “Good thing this isn’t a date or I’d be out on my ass, huh?”

“Course not, I’d give you at least two more strikes,” she chuckles, “Though, to be fair, if this was a date I wouldn’t be inviting you to my bedroom this early. Which I am about to do, heads up.”

“Thanks,” he smirked, clambering to his feet. He didn’t need Eliza to show him where her bedroom was, he’d slept over a good handful of times, after parties where Eliza deemed him too tipsy to get himself home.

It had to be said, the room was quintessentially Eliza. She couldn’t do much about the faded carpet in the living room or the squat, leather sofas or the kitchen cupboards that were the colour of phlegm, in Alex’s own words. But the bedroom, tucked away in the corner of the apartment with a window that looked out onto a fire escape where she could perch on an evening and watch the sun sink below the New York skyline, leaving the stars free to come out, like a million eyes opening cautiously, only gleaming as bright as they could through the thick pollution as soon as they saw the coast was clear. The room itself was a dusty blue, a soothing colour that seemed to wrap itself around you and keep you safe, the palate broken only by the many, many photos of her loved ones on the wall (many of them included Alex) and the rainbow of books and the bursts of green as flowering plants and succulents gathered like old friends embracing on every spare surface. The quilt on her bed was the same one Alex remembered from her dorm room and every other place she’d lived since, the one she, of course, had made herself.

The whole scene was just so familiar to him as he stepped inside, trotting at Eliza’s heels, so warm and safe and forgiving that he relaxed in spite of the fact that this was a step closer to go time. It was just that this room, maybe in different locations but the same room in essence, had seen the absolute worst of him- crying, having a panic attack, blind drunk, angry- and yet still welcomed him back.

A lot like Eliza herself.

“Okay,” Eliza spoke decisively, as if the awkwardness could be wrestled into nonexistence by a firm word and a pair of crossed arms, “Kiss me. That’ll let me know if I actually want to do this or not.”

Alex tilted his head a little, rolling the sleeves of his sweater up his arms, “But I kiss you all the time?”

And he did, it was true, pecks on the cheek and forehead to make her smile when she was feeling blue or in joyous awe after she yet again saved his ass with a perfectly timed up of coffee or one of her wonderfully simple solutions that somehow utterly fixed problems that he’d been chewing over for days.

“No, I mean…” Eliza searched for words, looking a little exasperated, “Kiss me like you’d kiss someone you really wanted to have sex with. Kiss me like…like someone you were dying to see naked, like you’re going to explode if you don’t get with them right this minute.”

Alex gave a little snort of disbelief but he stepped forward all the same and without another thought in his head, he brought his best friend close to him by way of firm hands on her shoulders and a swift, sure movement, pressing her lips to his, thinking of passion and love and want. He let his lips part a little after a few moments, after she relaxed in his hold, tilting his head to close just that little bit of unnecessary distance and was gratified to find her mirroring him. How long the kiss lasted, neither of them were really sure but it ended with both of them a little reluctant to let it go, leaving the undeniable answer as ‘not long enough’.

“So…” Alex murmured, a rasp in his voice.

“Yeah,” Eliza’s eyes were wide and her pupils seemed so big that Alex could fall into them, “Yeah, I want to do this.”

He smiled that crooked smile of his though, underneath it, he was thinking that the kiss didn’t really feel all that different from any other time he’d kissed her, which was…disconcerting.

 

They decided to shed their clothes at the same time, in the interests of fairness.

Eliza discovered that Alex had a lot more tattoos than she’d ever imagined, one’s he had mentioned to her but she’d never seen with her own eyes, diminishing their expansiveness. Constellations scattered across his lower stomach, she’d seen them poking up above the line of his pants when he stretched but she’d never realised how far they reached, how detailed and beautiful in their simplicity they were. A paper sailboat trekked bravely across his upper thigh, waves crashing around it, a feathered quill penned a long, looping line of ink up the length of one leg, smatterings of English, French and Spanish were carefully etched onto various parts of him, curling around clocks and birds and flowers and a Puerto Rican flag. He was a work of art.

Alex discovered a kind of roundness, a fullness, to Eliza around her hips, thighs and stomach. There were curves and slopes and valleys usually hidden underneath her clothes, a smattering of stretch marks he hadn’t known existed, a few freckles that moved up the inside of a thigh to places he couldn’t see from here but found himself desperately wanting to follow them. His fingers itched to touch that softness, follow the curves and squeeze and stroke and kiss.

It was amazing what new things you could learn from someone with one glance and the absence of clothes.

Eliza had read up on good positions for conceiving, where gravity could hopefully play its part, bringing all the right elements close enough together for the spark to catch and a baby to start forming, like the way dust and gas collected into stars under the same force. A pillow under her hips and sprawled back against the cushions, she felt a little silly but all Alex could think of was the intoxicating darkness of her hair against the sheer white pillows, the way she could look up at him as he moved to take his place between her knees, the softness now right there under him and nothing to stop him reaching out and caressing it.

No one needed to make any kind of verbal request now, their lips met entirely of their own accord, though it was Alex who started the gentle nipping at Eliza’s lower lip, already a little drunk on kissing her full, slightly swollen, beautifully dusky pink lips, the spine tingling but not unwelcome sensation of his tongue sliding over her’s. Though it only took a few seconds before Eliza was responding in kind, her hands coming up to tangle in his thick, dark mass of hair and keep him good and close.

Alex almost made a total idiot out of himself and stopped to request a condom before he remembered the whole goddamn point of this and just went for it, needing to shuffle her over a little, raise his own hips, fumble just a tiny amount and then he was _there,_ with a low sigh from himself and a short gasp of surprise from Eliza. He almost stopped, terrified he’d caused some hurt, moved to fast, moved without permission, taken too much too soon. But then Eliza’s legs were thrown around his hips, her feet pressing into his lower back and pushing him, if anything, deeper.

Her teeth grazed his earlobe and she murmured in a tone that was nothing short of begging, “Please.”

Alex wasn’t about to make her ask twice. He didn’t think, he didn’t ask for any logic or reason, he just chased this wild desire in his chest and the plea in his friend’s voice. He rocked her, heavy and rhythmic, into the softness of the mattress, never taking his eyes off her, not wanting to miss a second of the way she bit her lip and her eyes rolled back when he hit home and her pupils swelled and her face took on the achingly beautiful blush of fresh rose petals. It got even better when his thumb, apparently of its own volition, slipped down and pressed none too lightly against her clit; that made her cry out loud, her expression rapturous, panting as she climbed higher and higher under hm.

As soon as he saw her getting there, the only thing he wanted to do in the whole damn world was get her there faster, harder, better, the pace of his lithe hips increasing until the bed springs began to make themselves heard and Eliza’s sweet little gasps became louder and higher, melding into one wordless cry. Alex wasn’t even really aware that the low, wanton growl was his own, the one that pitched so perfectly with the noises she was making. He just lost sight of himself in the pull of her muscles, the feeling of her fingers tugging at his hair, the beautiful heat where their bodies joined and his thumb rubbed.

As distracted as he was by what he was doing to her, what she was giving him in return, his own climax caught him by such surprise that Alex felt the whole room, the whole damn world, tip dizzily around him as his hips jerked erratically and he spent himself inside her. Though he didn’t miss Eliza coming a second or two behind him, writhing so uncontrollably that he was a little worried for a moment, until the tension let them both go and they were left exhausted and a little bit shaken.

Alex and Eliza both held their breath, waiting for the awkwardness to come barrelling back with a vengeance, braced for it, Alex actually mapping out where he’d left his clothes so he could scramble back into them as swiftly as possible and bolt for the door. But it never seemed to find them, like they’d successfully held their breaths and stilled their bodies and it had just passed them by.

They untangled themselves as painlessly as they could, leaving Alex to roll onto his back by Eliza’s side, both just catching their breath. At some point their hands found each other and joined, subtly and gently, without either of them really being aware of it. It was a long time before either of them said anything.

“I…well, hopefully that worked,” Eliza found her voice first, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Yeah…” Alex began, short of breath, gazing straight ahead just like she was, like they both recognized that that was a safe place for their eyes to rest. Who knew what might happen if they went wandering? “Though…what are the chances that you got pregnant back there?”

Eliza blinked, her free hand fluttering unconsciously to her stomach, resting there lightly, “I’m not sure. Low, I guess, relatively speaking.”

Alex spoke as casually as he could, “Well then, it would make sense, wouldn’t it, if, y’know, as long as you were still ovulating, we…we kept doing that?”

There was a slight mutual wince as they both froze, waiting to see of what he’d just said had crossed the line, upset the painfully delicate balance they stood on here. But there was no thunder, no sudden swarm of locusts, the earth didn’t open up underneath the bed. Nothing happened.

“I mean, it’s only logical,” Eliza murmured, “Yeah, why not?”

Even as they (eventually) dressed and gathered themselves back together, it still felt like something important hadn’t been said, there was the feeling of a gap going unfilled, a missing step. It was still there as Alex stood on Eliza’s stoop, lingering as they said goodbye, both of them feeling this glaring absence.

“Hey…” Eliza called out as Alex’s sneakers touched down on the sidewalk, reaching in a sudden, frantic rush to fix the problem. But as Alex turned back, looking at her quizzically with his wide, brown eyes, she didn’t know what to say.

So, what she said was, “You know you’re my favourite person ever, right?”

Alex cracked a smile, chuckling gently, “Yeah. You’re my favourite too.”

It wasn’t quite right. But it would do for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! I have a ko-fi and you could always leave me a comment if you'd like to make me smile on my birthday ;)


End file.
